The Substance of Daydreams

The Substance of Daydreams

by

Matt McGuire

Peeling an apple in housecoat
and Revlon,
the long ribbon of fruit skin
twirling off the paring knife,
arthritic fingers and chipped rose pink split fingernail polish,
she glances from side to side
in expectation of
what?
The haggard reaper creeping on toetips
to avoid disturbing
Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?
Her Lord and Savior returning in glory
to the tune of Gabriel's cornet?
A familial ghost, perhaps
the long rotten patriarch,
the sawmiller cum Vitalis Lothario?
The divorced playboy,
his iron workleather fingers
the substance of daydreams,
poised over her shoulder
for that pat on the back
she never received,
the myrrh of kingship
prized above Spanish gold,
the caress of purple,
his gold rimmed spectacles
moist with repentant tears?

Her weight is proportionate
to the winters she's spent in frustrated, chaste
isolation
since the Veteran's Administration took his prostate
and the gathering of stick fuel,
maters,
and the monthly check took his
pride.
She peers into the woods where the hobos live
and curses the State,
and those rough mendicant phantoms
that seem to grow larger,
and more terrifying,
with each tick of the cuckoo clock.

She bows her head in reverence
to a Calvinist demigod
known as Austerity.
She peeps through her fingers at Victor Newman
and secretly longs to lie with him
on a beach outside the old hotel in
Miami,
the only paradise she's ever known,
where everything is 1953
in technicolor,
a broad toothed Negro
in white linen
serving them Ginger Ale with a twist of lime,
the way it used to taste,
before the immigrants,
and the Taliban,
and MSG
ruined ever setting foot
outside of Watauga county again.

In the night, He calls to her.

“Watch for me daughter,
for a vigilant eye never sleeps.”

The vinyl blinds split
in a narrow diamond,
as the world
and Watauga
sleep
amid the decadence
and folly
of the Latter Days.